SPN-Fanfiction - Dean goes AWOL
by spnfanfromeurope
Summary: Dean goes hunting alone. Bad idea. Slightly spoilerish for s 14. Some cursing. No smut. No ships. Warning: contains spanking between adults, non-sexual. Sort of consensual. I own nothing, just playing with toys. And thank you to the wonderful reader, who helped me with this one.


Dean cut the engine and listened as the rumbling died out.  
Shutting the headlights off, he sat for a while in the darkness, staring at nothing through the windscreen.  
Raindrops ran down the window like tears. He focused on them, following one, then another as they made their wet trails down, down, down, then looked past them out into the night.

He shouldn't have come here. He shouldn't have. He should have found a cheap motel and gone to ground in yet another ugly room, as he, they, had done so often before.  
He should turn the key, let Baby's growl soothe the pain as he drove away down the endless American country roads. But he didn't.

He had just wanted to be somewhere safe for a change. He had wanted someone to take care of him for once in his damn life, and he hated himself for feeling that way. He had always been able to take care of himself. Himself and Sam. Always. He'd had to, nobody else ever had.

But now Sammy was not Sammy anymore. He was Sam fucking Winchester. Or "Chief".  
And even though Dean was proud of the bearded stranger, the competent leader, his little brother had turned into, it had all just been too much. Too many strangers around. Too many changes. And Sammy wasn't Sammy and didn't need him anymore. Dean shut his eyes briefly. Who was he even anymore? Michaels abandoned vessel? A worn down, worn out hunter?

All he had to do now was drive back down that road. Maybe not even go to a motel, just pull over some where quiet and get some rest. Crawl into the backseat and curl up under a blanket. But he didn't. He wanted someone…needed someone to … to… hold him for a little bit… not having to be strong and brave, just for one night… dammit… he was so tired. So very tired.

Slowly climbing out of the black car he leaned a moment against the door, taking a few deep steadying breaths. Damn, he hurt.  
His left hand was a throbbing mess and the elbow on the same side screamed at him whenever he tried to move it.  
Right knee was stiffening up from where a kick had landed, and he wasn't sure, he would be able to walk on it come morning.  
His ribs groaned in duet with his back from where he'd hit a wall at one point during the fight, and somewhere behind his eyes a couple of gnomes seemed to be having a party, a death-metal rave judging from the banging of the drums.  
He wasn't sure whether the dizziness was from a knock to the head, or from sheer exhaustion. He was running on empty. Lack of sleep, long days on the road, on the hunt and quite an epic fight at the end, even if he did say so himself.  
Dean sighed softly and shut the door, with its usual reassuring creak. He ran a regretful eye over the ugly dent in his Baby's side.  
"You and me both, sweetheart. Banged up and not as young as we used to be. I'm sorry. I promise, I'll fix that right up nicely for you."

Head down, Dean trudged his way through the cold rain to the front door of the neat house. He would knock, at least. Since he had come all this way, he might as well knock. Then he would be told to get lost and he would leave quietly, not make more of a fool of himself than he already had.

He carefully pressed his left arm into his body before letting go of it with his good right hand, so he could knock. He barely managed more than one tentative knock before the door was pulled open fast.  
Jody Mills stared at him. Her mouth dropped open and her face turned ghostly white. Dean stepped back, started to apologize, back away, get the fuck out of there, when she suddenly lunged forward, grabbed his shoulder and pulled him into the house.

"Dean! Are you ok? Are you? Where have you been? What's going on? Geeezzz you reek!"  
"I'm sorry, I'll go away"  
"No! No, don't. Get in here. What on Earth…"  
Jody's voice petered out… She held him at arm's length, running her eyes up and down his body.  
"What's wrong with you?"  
"Nothing. I'm fine"  
"Would you like to answer that one again, without lying to my face this time?"  
"I'm fine. Just bruises. Mainly."  
"Really? Well, I don't like the way you are holding yourself."  
"I shouldn't have come here. Sorry." Dean muttered.  
Jody reached out and tapped him lightly on the head.  
"Don't be an idiot, here is exactly where you should have come. Now get in here, sit down before you fall down."

It was probably the head tap that did it.  
Dean obeyed before he even consciously had made any decision.  
He was sitting on one of Jody's kitchen chairs, trying not to pass out, staring blankly at nothing while her voice rolled over and around him.  
Waves of the ocean, a pleasant sound, but one without meaning.  
Later he would realize just how much he must have freaked her out, and that all the chattering was her stalling, drawing out time until back-up arrived. Which it did.  
There was no polite tapping on the door this time. It just slammed open and Sam entered the house like a hurricane bend on destruction.  
Dean looked up at the sound. It was like watching a storm heading towards you. He could almost taste the violence swirling in the air, the smell of ozone immediately prior to a lightning strike. Before his reeling brain had fully registered who, what or why, Sam had grabbed two fistfuls of his jacket, and he was pulled to his feet, only to be slammed against the wall for the second time of the day. Dean clamped his hands onto Sam's wrists to prevent a grab for the throat or a punch to the face.  
"Why? Why did you do that? Didn't you trust me to stand by you? To have your back?"

Sam leaned in closer, and Dean felt his chest muscles bruise under the pressure from his brother's fists.  
Dean leaned his head back against the wall and let go of Sam's wrists.  
"Go ahead. I understand. Yell at me if you want. You can hit me, if you need to, it's ok. I can take it. Just… don't… don't …"  
The words "hate me… leave me" vibrated unsaid in the air between the brothers.

"Let. Him. Go."  
The words were calm and implacable. Sam turned his head. Felt Dean slumping in his grip when the eye-contact was broken.  
Sam stared at the woman, who, with her big heart and sheer courage, managed to be a leash for two volatile tempers and pushed away from Dean, giving him a last knock into the wall while doing so.

Dean saw Sam turn back towards him. Saw the mist of fury lift from his brother's eyes and saw the change when he finally really looked at Dean. For the first time that night Dean wondered what he might actually look like, to get that expression on his brother's face.

"Holy shit, Dean. How much of that blood is yours?"  
"I'm fine."  
"Sure you are. We gotta get you hosed down, so we can see what's what here. Come on."  
Sam grabbed Dean by the neck, and Dean found himself being propelled into the bathroom like a reluctant puppy.  
Sam locked the door behind them, turned the shower on, then crossed his arms.  
"Strip. I want to get a look at that arm, and the rest of it. So: strip down and get under the water."  
"Get out, Sammy, I ain't showering with you as a nursemaid."

"Dean,"  
there was a dangerous edge to Sam's voice, one Dean had rarely heard before. Not from Sam. He'd heard it plenty of times from their dad growing up as they had, hard and fast, on the road and in motel rooms across the country,  
"I'm not joking around. Strip or I will do it for you, even if I have to lay you out on the floor first. Condition you're in, I can do it, and I won't even have to break a sweat and you know it."

Dean did.  
Letting his head hang in defeat, he carefully peeled his soiled clothes off. In the end he had to accept Sam's help to get out of his shirt and t-shirt.  
He just gave up at that point and stood there like a puppet while Sam, cursing, pulled out a knife and cut the clothes from his brother's battered body.  
When he was naked, he heard Sam's quick intake of breath.

"Elbow's out of joint. Ya want it in now or after the shower?"  
"Get it over with."  
Dean gritted his teeth as Sam took hold of his arm with both hands.  
"On three… 1… 2..."  
Sam suddenly pushed Dean's hand towards his shoulder, bending his elbow as far as it could go, and gave it a sideways shove. There was an audible "Click" as the joint went into its correct position, and Dean grunted in pain. Sam turned to pick up the dirty clothes and to give his brother a few moments of privacy to find his breath again.

Then Dean felt himself getting pushed under the warm spray of the shower. Saw the floor turn pink and brown from the blood and goo. There was a lot of it. No wonder Jody had gone pale at the sight of him. One more thing to atone for before all this was finally over. A soapy cloth was pushed into his good hand.  
"Do the front yourself. I'll take your back."

The surprise jolted him a little more awake. He hadn't expected Sam to actually strip down and join him in the shower. Another piece of evidence of how far out he must be right now. Last time the two of them had been in a shower together, Sam had been a toddler. At the time Dean had gotten into the habit of bathing with him, since he would end up soaked anyway, trying to get a wriggling toddler-Sammy clean.

Sam's hands were surprisingly gentle on his back, running over his shoulders and ribs.  
He was aware of the fact that Sam was checking for injuries at the same time as he was doing the much-needed cleaning. Dean focused on getting his part of the job done, while trying not to move his left arm.

"Looks like a few banged up ribs, not broken, a knee that's messed up but probably just need some rest, that dislocated elbow and a couple of broken knuckles. Anything else, you want to tell me about? Anything that needs stiches?"  
"No, I'm fine."  
"Mhmmm…" Sam's voice was coming from near the floor now, as he'd crouched down to get the last of the gore off Dean's legs.  
"You might not want to lie about that to me right now."  
"What?"  
Dean sounded genuinely confused, and Sam looked up at him.  
"You got a wound here, at your ankle. Looks like it could need a few stitches."  
"Oh." There was a tinge of embarrassment in Dean's voice now.  
He cleared his throat.  
"I… I was a bit tired after the fight. And I was still high on adrenalin. And pissed off… I was putting my dirk back in the boot-sheath. I must have missed it and stabbed myself on the first try… sorry… "  
The last came out so dejectedly that Sam couldn't help but laugh.

"Come on, big brother. Let's get you to bed. But we are going to talk in the morning. You owe me, and Jody, an explanation."  
Dean just nodded and plodded after Sam down the hall to the guestroom, holding onto the towel around his waist with his good right hand.

He was on his stomach on the bed, the towel covering the important bits, when Jody marched into the room with a first aid kit and a blessed bottle of scotch.  
He reached for the bottle with his good arm and his best disarming smile .  
"You are a darling, Jody."

Jody swung the bottle out of reach, put the first aid kit on the bedtable, and held the bottle out with a smile. Dean made another grab for it and felt cold metal lock around his wrist. There was another click and his wrist was cuffed to the bedframe.  
"Hey!"  
"Can't have you slipping out middle of the night, Dean. This way, we know where you are come morning."  
Dean pulled at the cuffs a bit.  
"I can break out of these anytime I want to, you know that, right?" he said.  
Exaggerating a bit, since he had nothing within reach to use as a tool, and really wasn't up for that kind of fine motor skill anyways.

"Maybe you can," Sam said, "but you won't. Cause when I'm done stitching your leg up, I'm going to sleep right there on the floor next to you, and if you even make me think that you are considering getting out of bed, I'm going beat the crap out of you, then go back to sleep. Besides, Jody got all your clothes, and you ain't getting them back till morning. Can't really see you running out of here bare-assed."

Sam followed that statement with a solid slap at Dean's right butt-cheek, startling a yelp out of him.  
Then Sam sat on his leg and poured whisky over the wound making Dean gasp at the burn. While the wound was still singing that song of pain, Sam sewed it up quick and neat, and finally let Dean get a few sips of whisky.  
Jody busied herself with Dean's left hand, cleaning the bruised knuckles with yet another splash of whisky and wrapping it in clean white bandage.

Then Sam and Jody together got him pulled onto his side long enough to strap his left arm comfortably to his chest in a sling, keeping the elbow stable, so it would be able to heal properly. Dean rolled back on his front, and wriggled into as comfortable a position as he could find, what with both his hands being restricted in one way or another..

As Dean drifted off to sleep, he felt Jody's hand running gently through his hair, over and over, and he relaxed, one muscle at a time, finally letting himself fall into oblivion, the feeling of safety following him to the world of dreams.

The next morning Dean woke up to the slap of a leather belt across his ass. He yelped and almost jumped out of bed, except his left arm was immobile and his right wrist was still trapped by Jody's cuffs.  
He was shoved back down by Sam's large palm, felt Sam's knee dig into his back and the belt fell again.  
All the anger, Sam had managed to rein in last night, came back out in a flood now.

Dean was feebly struggling but couldn't escape the searing slaps of the belt or his brother's voice.

"You skipped out on me. Didn't even leave a note, just puff: vanished. Woke up, you were gone. No car. Didn't answer the phone, no nothing. You know how that made me feel? I only just got you back. And Michael's out here somewhere, on the loose. I thought… I thought… I …. Hell, I didn't know what to think! I thought, I'd lost you. Again.  
I know I've let you down. Again, and again. I know. I understand. But I don't deserve this. I don't deserve having to hunt my own brother, trying to find you by tracking your damn phone and following monsters. Going up against a nest of vampires alone? Oh, yeah. Don't look at me like that. I figured it out. Didn't you think, I would? I arrived just after you left that place.  
We don't hunt alone. You know that. *You* taught *me* that. And then you drove all the way here, as tired as that and with an useless arm too… you…you…you… utter moron!"

Every bit of the tirade was punctuated by a slap of the belt, but the pain of that was nothing compared to listening to the pain in Sam's voice.  
At first Dean had been struggling harder and harder – the clean physical reaction to pain enhanced by the tumultuous panic of being strapped up, cuffed and held down at the same time.  
But after a while, unable to close his ears, or his mind from what Sam was saying the combination of words and the fire in his ass broke through to him. Dean stopped trying to get up and went still, taking the pain, all of it.  
When Sam stopped talking, Dean muttered quietly between gasps:  
"Ok, Sam, ok. I get it, I'm sorry. I just needed some space, so I took off, and then I found out about that nest, so I just kept driving until I got to that town and I took care of that. At least that was something I could take care of. I needed that win, I really did. I'm sorry. I should have called you."

"Damn right, you should. I had search teams out for you everywhere."  
The word "everywhere" was punctuated by yet another strike of the belt, this one, the final one, hard enough to raise a welt that would leave a bruise and remind Dean of his transgressions every time he sat down for the next couple of days.

Sam threw the belt through the room and slid off the bed onto the floor, where he sat with his back to the bed, leaning against it.

"What do we do now, Dean?"  
"What do you mean, Sammy?"  
"I don't know. You running off like that. Me… what I just did… It's just so messed up. I'm sorry – I shouldn't have done that."  
"it's ok, Sammy. I probably deserve that and worse."  
"Dean, you thinking that is part of the problem, don't you see?"  
"Not really. It is what it is. And I'm hungry."  
Dean jingled the cuffs.  
"Any chance you'll let me out of these, so I can go to the bathroom and get something to eat?"  
Sam sighed.  
"Ok, but you are not off the hook. I want to talk about this."

After Dean was done in the bathroom and had gotten as dressed as he was going to get – which meant jeans and nothing on top, he made his slow way into the kitchen from where the alluring smell of bacon wafted.  
"Where's Jody?"  
"She got a call early this morning. Said to make us selves at home and not go anywhere until she got back."  
"So she didn't hear…"  
Dean waved a hand towards his ass as he winced his way onto a chair at the kitchen table.  
"Nope. Didn't plan on telling her either. Listen, Dean, I shouldn't have…"  
Dean waved a forkful of bacon in the air.  
"Hey, you made me bacon. All's well."  
"We really should talk."  
"Come on Sammy. No chick-flick moments, ok?"  
"Dean…"  
"Ok, ok… listen… I'm sorry I skipped out on you. I really didn't mean to go that far. Just, one thing leading to another and … everything's been so …f'ed up lately…I don't know…. You wanna take another swing at me, go ahead. But can I get my breakfast first, please?"  
"Dammit Dean, I'm not going to punch you, I just want to talk."  
"Can't we do the punch instead?"

Sam sighed and gave up. Tomorrow or the next day, when they were in the car and Dean had nowhere to go, because with that arm – Sam was going to be driving - he'd bring it up again.

When Jody came back that evening, she sighed at the sight of the two grown men wrestling each other like puppies in the living room trying to get control of the remote.  
At least they had cleaned the kitchen fairly nicely after breakfast, and presumably lunch, since all her bacon and every single egg was gone from the fridge.

That evening they had chicken and peas. Then they had popcorn and a movie.  
At 2 am Jody got woken up by a noise and found Dean in the living room, pacing.  
"What's up, Dean?"  
"Just a nightmare, Jody, go back to bed."  
Jody was rather proud that this adult man as strong and brave as he was allowed her to tuck him in and rub his back, while he dozed off back to sleep. And she didn't even know how much of a declaration of trust that was from a man who usually slept with a gun in his hand, tucked under the pillow.

Jody had to admit, the boys were not bad houseguests. As such. They did their share of the chores and tried not to get in her way – mostly.  
They were also obviously a couple of bachelors, who had grown up with no steady home and no one to actually *teach* them how to do those chores.

Dean's tendency to leave weird leftover food in the strangest of places "for later" combined with Sam's sweat-wear hanging in unexpected places "to dry off" made from some unusual odors in her house.  
Then there was their eclectic way of doing chores – everything tended to be cleaned with bleach and she caught Dean pouring beer into her steam-iron…  
It made for a few rather tense conversations.  
Not to mention the fact that her simple presence - and maybe those conversations in reality made it even worse - seemed to give two grown-ass men an rare opportunity to act like the teenagers, they had never really been allowed to be. They apparently enjoyed butting heads with each other over everything and anything, sometimes ending up in a pile on the floor.  
Dammit, she had "liked" the vase on the corner table. And been rather fond of the glass lamp that got caught in a game of "toss the beer can."  
The fact that both men were utterly charming and contrite, whenever she had to pull them up on their antics somehow didn't make matters any better.  
As much as she loved the boys, and kind of enjoyed seeing them let their guard down, so to speak, Jody was starting to feel a little frazzled, when inspiration struck.

After a handful of days of domestic bliss – as the boys saw it, at least - their routine was interrupted by Mary showing up one afternoon.  
"Hey Mom? What's up?"  
Dean was moving better now, even though his arm was still in a sling.  
"You got a hunt for us?"  
"You need help?"  
"Nah, just got a text from Jody inviting me for dinner."  
"Uhmm… Cool?"  
Dean and Sam exchanged a slightly confused look.  
"Yeah, she said: 'your boys are having a wonderful time, come and get them.'"

Both brothers immediately got up, but Jody laughed.

"Relax, boys, you are welcome to stay anytime, but I'm going out of town for a conference and I figured you'd be better off with your mother until Dean's arm and knee gets back to normal. Don't want you stuck in some dirty nowhere motel when you aren't both fit for fight. Or ready to go all the way back to that bunker of yours. You need some rest, boys."

Sam and Dean exchanged an incredulous look. As if it would have been the first time they would have been in a motel-room somewhere waiting for one or the other - or them both - to heal up enough to really take to the road again.  
But both Mary and Jody were sending off waves of the kind of determination only mothers could manage to produce, so without words, the brothers decided not to argue, this time, and just go with the flow.


End file.
